Heda Margolius Kovaly’s Under A Cruel Star is a captivating memoir that provides historical accounts during the time period when Czechoslovakia was under Nazi control and faced with Stalinism. Kovaly gives her personal first hand accounts on experiences in concentration camps, post-war struggles, and the life that she lived while under Communism. Contrasting with Under A Cruel Star, John Merriman’s A History of Modern Europe uses clear and concise mundane facts to provide the accounts of history during this era. Presenting history in a memoir makes the read effortless and alluring but it also takes away some of the factual significance that the textbook offers. History presented in this form differs from accounts during this time era written…
The reason why most of the important sources from this book are private diaries written by Soviet kids during the 1970s is because it gives the readers an opportunity to compare personal thoughts of young people of western cultural products from diaries. In this way it recreates a real social history of the Brezhnev era.…
The Holocaust was a traumatizing and depressing time period in history due to the Nazis in the leadership of their dictator Adolf Hitler. The Nazis were a Political Party during World War ΙΙ from 1941 through 1945. Many Jews during this time were discriminated, murdered, and humiliated in front of many other Jews and Germans. “Six million Jews died in a merciless way at the hands of the Nazis” (Sherbok 1). The Holocaust is an unforgettable period in history that left a scar on many Jews including Vladek. Vladek was a Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust that experienced and witnessed several tragedies during this time. The war was over when his son Art Spiegelman is willing to write a book about the Holocaust. He asked his father Vladek if he could help him write his book by telling him his story and experiences during this time, Vladek agrees. Due to the Holocaust and unforgettable experiences Vladek went through, his life was never the same, he changed a lot in the manner of being more careful with money and resourceful with the things he had. Vladek also became very strict with his son Art Spiegelman and had a very strong character this is reasonable because as a young man he went through a crisis by going to the war at a young age, lost his wife and first son. The Holocaust definitely changed his style of living and his personality that led to a lot of consequences.…
Darkness in the texts is a literal and metaphorical expression of how the corrupt Stasi regime oppressed their history through control in correspondence to the paternalistic actions and observations made by the Stasi and inhumanity due to the actions of the Stasi, the lack of quality of life due to the wall and Stasi’s regime and the characteristics of people due to their treatment and personality.…
1. “In any war story, especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told the way. “ (71)…
One of the primary themes or messages Elie Wiesel said he has tried to deliver with Night is that all human beings have the responsibility to share with others how their past experiences have changed their identity and how those experiences affect others. Wiesel believes that, in order to understand the true impact of the Holocaust, survivors like himself must serve as messengers to current and future generations by “bearing witness” to the events of the Holocaust and by explaining how those events changed each individual’s identity.…
S. A Novel about the Balkans, by Slavenka Drakulic, is a story about a Bosnian woman, named S., who was tortured by the hands of brutal soldiers during the Bosnia war. The novel mainly centers on a series of S.’s flashbacks, as she recounts the horrific ill-treatment she endured throughout this time period. Through telling S’s story, the author creates a vivid image of how deep and dark human nature is during wartime. The story is a revelation of the terrifying aspects of war, which include torture, rape and mass murdering/genocide by the occupying forces. Slavenka Drakulic’s story depicts how S. rose above the war crimes and on top of injustice to show the true meaning of human life. During war, almost all men and women involved suffer immensely, however, as portrayed in the novel S., women suffer more through mistreatment, sexual abuse, mishandling and irreversible traumas acted upon by the inhumane soldiers. The events that occurred in Bosnia during the 1990’s will go down in history as one of the most inhuman and cruel time periods ever. Through the character S.,…
The author uses different literary devices, including point of view and diction to show a character’s struggle in choice between regret and heroism. His use of first person point of view is used to convey regret, while his use of diction is used to show heroism.…
We choose the reading prompts, A Jewish Cemetery Near Leningrad written by Josef Brodsky, and Bitburg written by Elie Wiesel. Both writings are similar in many ways despite being written by different authors. One is a poem, the other a speech, but they both express the emotional rollercoasters the Jews went through during the Holocaust. Not only are they both similar, but they’re also similar to the book, Night, written by Elie Wiesel.…
2. The narrator is reminiscing his past memories that show his efforts to keep a distance from the things he fears and hates. One can try very hard to keep the truth hidden, but it always prevails through. Another…
When Wiesel says, "I know your choice transcends my person," he means that he is grateful for being chosen for the Nobel Peace Prize. Also, Wiesel indicates that he is thankful that the committee surpassed himself and recognized people who sacrificed from the Holocaust. Wiesel refers himself in the first person and the third person during paragraphs four through six to help the reader better understand his piece. With the use of two different narratives, Wiesel gives the reader a better understanding and it also creates an image in the reader's head of what has happened from his point of view. When Wiesel says, “if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices,” he means that if people ignore that something could occur once more, people are…
defined as “the faculty by which events are recalled or kept in mind”. Thus history…
• “During the darkest of times in the ghettos and death-camps, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.”…
In the graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman, it can be argued that Vladek’s personality could be a result of his childhood and of his grueling experience of living through the Holocaust. Throughout the novel we often see Art Spiegelman pondering the question of why his father acts the way he does. When we go through situations in life in which we must see things that are disturbing, we tend to change our perspective on the world. This relates back to Vladeks character and the way he changed throughout the novel. Vladek's experiences with the Holocaust psychologically scarred him forever, these experiences have made him non-trusting, cheap, and selfish.…
Although, the essay starts with his experiences in prison, towards the middle of the essay a shift occurred. What first started as a self-ambition to pursue knowledge, expanded to a moral responsibility to make others aware of true he found in the books he read and changed his perspective about the world. X defends that a hidden history – a hidden meaning – may have purposely forgotten and the group must do something to restore then supposedly hidden…